Washington Post - United States - In these YouTubian times, there's a certain peril in conducting a multi-city stand-up comedy tour: Punch lines precede their progenitor. Which is to say, you probably already heard about
Chris Rock's take on
Hillary Clinton: "I think America's ready for a woman president, I really do -- but does it have to be that woman?" Or that he thinks
John McCain is as old as dirt: "I don't need [a president] with a bucket list." And for weeks, the afrosphere's been abuzz over Rock's oh-no-he-didn't take on
Barack Obama's biggest handicap: "He has a black wife. . . . If Barack Obama really wants to be president, he needs to get him a white girl."
But
Chris Rock is
Chris Rock, which means that even if his oft-quoted jokes lost a little of their traction before he landed on Constitution Hall's stage Friday night, he's still got that unique ability to enthrall. Maybe it's the way he squints his eyes and shifts his voice to the upper registers, pausing right before he's about to say something really outrageous. With his scrawny body and lollipop head, he's always got the air of the impudent imp -- even at 42. (He's scheduled to play four dates here, concluding with a performance tonight.)
Rock's not a storyteller, like
Richard Pryor, or someone who easily morphs into other characters, like
Dave Chappelle. Rock is always Rock. Even in his movies, even playing a "serious" role like Pookie the crackhead in "New Jack City," he's always the same. Perturbed, petulant, put out. You look at him, and you want to laugh.
Friday night he served up vintage Rockian humor in a nearly 90-minute set before a capacity house, playing the curmudgeonly cynic, bitterly railing against a "crazy
George Bush deregulated world" where even ring tones are an indication of a sinister conspiracy at work. (It's just a matter of time before all the phone companies get together and conspire to sell us phones that don't ring at all -- we'll all have to pay for the privilege of being able to hear our phones ring. Believe it!)
In this worldview, men and women are embattled enemies, all politicians lie and white men still rule the world -- even if Obama, whom Rock supports, is leading in the polls. ("It's going to be hard for Barack to be president. . . . Hillary's not going to give up. She's like Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction.' ") As Rock, pacing the stage in a slick green suit, sees it, black folks still have to labor harder than anyone else just to be on even footing. Don't believe it? In his exclusive neighborhood in Alpine, N.J., he said, only three of his neighbors are African American:
Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and
Denzel Washington. His white next-door neighbor? "He's a [expletive] dentist."
